Some National Hockey League players, truly, do not know what day it is until they look at their team-delivered itineraries.

Others most definitely know what day it is and who they are playing, who is their leading scorer, what type of powerplay formation they use, how they’ve been playing, where the opposition sits in the standings, and where they themselves sit as a team in the standings.

Milan Lucic is the latter.

“You know what?” the Calgary Flames winger was saying over the weekend. “I look at it every night before I go to bed and when I get up in the morning. It’s fun because you’re in it, you have control of it as a player. You know, it’s funny. You talk to guys that aren’t playing anymore that used to play and they look at (the standings) and wish they could be a part of it so they can have control of it. I think it’s a fun part of the game; I think it’s a good thing to know where you’re at, to know where your opponents are at, and to be a student of the game as well as a player of the game.

“I think it just adds to the fun of living a dream of being an NHL player.”

And, perhaps, there is no more enjoyable time to be in control of your own destiny in the Pacific Division.

Apart from the former heavyweights — San Jose, Los Angeles, and Anaheim — who now occupy the bottom three spots, to quote Zac Rinaldo, it’s a “kill or be killed” mentality every night.

Heading into Sunday’s action, only three points separated fifth place and first place and as the day’s action progressed, that gap shrunk to two points. The winner of Saturday’s game between the Flames and Oilers was the difference between moving into first place or sinking into fourth place.

After a 4-3 Battle of Alberta win, the Flames moved into the top spot and remained there after Arizona (25-18-5) lost to Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, Vancouver’s 4-1 win over the Minnesota Wild improved their record to 25-17-4 and bumped them into third and the Oilers (24-18-5) were in fifth.

And that was just on Sunday.

It’s wild. It’s exciting.

And it’s only January.

“The mindset back in the day was if you take a night off here and there, then once the playoffs come or before the playoffs, you ramp it up,” Lucic continued. “But it feels like you’re in the playoffs already. You see Vancouver, they go on a seven-game winning streak and they drop two and now they’re not in a playoff spot. It seems like if you drop one or two, you’ve gotta win four or five to get yourself back into it.

“It’s crazy right now. What is it? Five teams in our division battling for a spot? It’s going to be like this for the last 35 games.”

For the Flames, that’s exactly what they have remaining as they hit the road for a three-game jaunt to Eastern Canada and the Atlantic Division where they’ll face the Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators before their NHL-mandated bye week which flows right into the NHL all-star break.

Currently, on a five-game win streak, they’ve been stressing that this stretch of games — after Christmas until the bye week — are ultra-important for gaining momentum.

And, apparently, staying afloat in the log-jammed Pacific Division.

“The fact that it’s a tight division is good,” said Flames interim head coach Geoff Ward. “That means every game for us we know we’re going to get a good game from our opponent in the division. That forces us to play to a higher level, ultimately, in the end. That will make us a much better team in the end or a much more prepared team. Because at this time of the year, you can’t go into this stretch of the season not being battle-tested. The fact the teams are so tight, you know you’re getting those games and your team has the opportunity to become more battle-tested.

“Ultimately, down the stretch, that’s what you need. You need to be able to understand what that is and react to it in the right way.”

For his club, the results have been there and there’s no denying they have put things together when it matters, going 7-3-0 in their last 10 games. After a crazy start to the 2019-20 season, which saw a seven-game losing streak for this club culminating with the departure of former head coach Bill Peters, they’re figuring things out.

But stop us if you’ve heard this one before: the Flames are rolling into the bye week/NHL All-Star break and, all of a sudden, it’s the first round of playoffs . . .

In the spring of 2019, the best team in the Western Conference did a complete bellyflop and were ousted in five games at the hands of the Colorado Avalanche.

“We can draw on our experience from last year,” insisted Ward. “We played pretty good going into the break and then, coming out of the break, we fell off. For us, we’re not looking at the break so much as a team. We’re looking at (Saturday) game and then we’ll take a look at our road trip.

“It’s probably good for us that we’re going into the break on that we are on the road, it allows us to be together as a group a lot more and focus on what’s important and that’s winning some hockey games going into the break.”

And look no further than the unicorns of 2019 — the Stanley Cup winning-St. Louis Blues who were dead-last in the league on Jan. 2.

“I know that’s one in a million, a team goes from last place to winning the Stanley Cup . . . but they were in playoff mode before they got into the playoffs,” Lucic said. “You talk about Calgary last year, and they kind of cruised in. Tampa, too. All the Wild Card teams that won the first round of the playoffs, they were, what 9-1, 8-2, just going in. so, they were playing at the top of their game just to get in.”

He pointed out that because of the competition in their division, the Flames need to be on their toes every night.

“The fact that it’s tight right now is an advantage because it forces you to play good hockey,” he said. “You can’t come in and get away from your game, lose your focus so that you go on a little bit of a slide. The competition is going to bring out the best in you. If it doesn’t, you’re going to find yourself looking up in the standings pretty quickly. For us, that’s a thing we can draw on and springboard ourselves to be prepared mentally.

“Ultimately, that helps us.”

Lucic, for one, loves it.

“I think it’s great for hockey,” he said. “I think it’s great for us as competitors because we can’t take nights off and we have to bring it. It puts pressure on goaltending. It puts pressure on special teams. It puts pressure on goal scoring. It puts pressure on coaches and how they use their lineup. It’s playoff mode from New Year’s on.

“I think when they made the standings this way, this is what they were shooting for — that competitive balance.”

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